The author of sixteen consecutive New York Times bestsellers unleashes a hero for the next millennium in an electrifying new series of unrelenting action and edge-of-your-seat thrills. Clive Cussler introduces us to Kurt Austin, the courageous leader of the NUMA exploration team.

When Kurt Austin, the leader of a courageous National Underwater & Marine Agency exploration team, rescues beautiful marine archaeologist Nina Kirov off the coast of Morocco, he becomes the next target of Texas industrialist Don Halcon. A madman bent on carving a new nation out of the southwestern United States and Mexico, Halcon’s scheme hinges on Nina’s recent discovery involving Christopher Columbus, and a priceless pre-Columbian antiquity buried in the battered remains of the sunken Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria. Only Kurt Austin and his crack NUMA team stand between Halcon and the Andrea Doria’s silent steel hull—and if their deadly mission fails, Halcon will ride to power on a wave of death and destruction.

About the book

I chose this book for the Popsugar challenge, for the prompt “a book with an animal in the title” since I had destined the one chosen previously to another prompt, but I must say I didn’t liked this too much.

The story is too long, the times that the NUMA is in danger is ridiculous, the bad guy had the potential to be a really bad guy but the final fight didn’t satisfied me.

There are so many questions left unanswered! How did the NUMA know where to go to solve the mystery? I did not understand how the went from the stone to Guatemala O_o Sometimes the writers draw the map of a land so we, readers, can also have a vision of the place, but there isn’t one here and I honestly did not understand anything of the description they have made of the map. And how did “the bad guy” know where to look if he did not see the stone?

I don’t like when they try to refute a historical fact (I do not question that there have been pre-Columbian contacts between civilizations of the old world with the Maya), it doesn’t explain what it’s true and what it isn’t. Should I think that Christopher Columbus is buried somewhere unknown on this planet and it’s where the book says it is or is this fact just the author’s fantasy? I need a note (a big one) from the author!

The book is not bad in itself, there are details that leave me a little speechless in a bad way. It’s also true that it took me two months to finish this book because the beginning is boring. I would have preferred more Nina and less Gamay and her adventures on the river.